The rotten core at the heart of the planning process was on display for all to witness on Monday. All right, the objectors did win this battle. However, the developer will simply appeal, convinced in his own mind, like many before him, that he will win in the end.
And why should he feel this? Look at the way the council operates.
Officers choose behind closed doors to take a line in supporting an application by a developer. We are not privy to how this happens, because it is not done in public.
Then hundreds of people come to to a public meeting and demonstrate the sheer weight of public opinion through the numbers of people who come to oppose it. Apparently, they are not currently obliged to hold their meetings in front of any public at all! A controversial scheme affecting the entire town centre could be agreed in this way. This is surely wrong!
But then we watch amazed! Who is the interrogator and who is the interrogated here?
We discover that the council officer, who has taken the unpopular stance, is interrogating the local councillor, representing the views of the majority of about 300 people in the room. Surely, you think, it should be our elected local ouncillor that should be interrogating the council officers over their decision to support this controversial scheme. However, as things stand, we the public are not even allowed to question their private decision-making process.
Until this undemocratic procedure is altered, we will find ourselves continuously dealing with council officers, unwilling to even face the general public, making decisions behind closed doors and not subject to any kind of public interrogation about their reasons. No wonder Calderdale Council is lowest in the national league table for communicating effectively with the people they deem to represent!
Why have they supported such a developer? It seems we will never know, because they are not called upon to give their reasons.
If council officers choose to support and even act like the people representing the scheme, they should be interrogated by our local representatives for taking an unpopular course of action, not the other way round.
Until this happens, hundreds of us will be forced to watch, like we were on Monday night, our elected representatives placed in the firing line by unelected council officers who had made their decisions away from the public gaze and were not expected to explain their reasons for supporting a highly controversial scheme.
This is fundamentally and morally wrong and we should go to Parliament, if necessary, to change it!
Nick Wilding